SUCH EXCITEMENT …

So, we had a little bit of excitement at work today. No one wanted to be there – I mean, who wants to work on the Friday after a holiday? But several of us managed to pull ourselves in at the ungodly hour of 8 AM and the morning passed uneventfully. There was a weird smell in my office that had been there since Wednesday (I couldn’t smell it then because of my cold) but I got used to it quickly and it wasn’t too invasive. During lunch, J (the guy in the office next to me) asked if I lost power because his computer turned itself off and then on again quickly. I said no, and then heard a fsst sound. I looked at the outlet that’s on the wall between our offices and it was turning brown. J came and looked and decided, rightfully so, that we should not keep this a secret between ourselves and maybe we should let the fire company know. While he called 911, I called the building owners. Before I was done leaving a message for them, he was in my office again saying that we had to evacuate the building and that the fire company was on it’s way over to check things out. I quickly packed up my lap-top, thinking if anything happened, the computer would probably be safer in my car. With book and iPhone in hand, I headed out into the snow to find that the first fire company was already there.

All in all, we had three fire companies respond, one police department, one EMT (sans ambulance), the fire marshall and one other official that I never figured out who he was. The guy in the next office was also in constant contact with our boss who hadn’t come in today. Firemen in gear complete with AXES were going in and out of the building (by the way, how come none of the firemen that grace the pages of calendars work for these three companies? Not even close!) One went in with a camera that they were going to feed through the socket to look for hot spots. Another had some kind of wandy thing that kept beeping – at what, I have no idea.

The outcome of this little exercise was there was a short in the wires somewhere. They found this by putting a hole in my office wall. Luckily, we’re drywall contractors so we’ll be able to fix it easily, but still – THERE’S A HOLE IN MY WALL! They turned off the power to the two outlets (one on my side of the wall and one on the other office’s side) and I would like to point out that there was nothing plugged into my socket while J had a ton of stuff in his, yet mine is the one that burned so it looks like it’s all my fault but in this one instance, I am completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Not that that is going to help me on Monday when all the guys are back in the office and asking what I did to make the place go up in flames. And it’s not going to save me from the “fire hazard” comments that are just waiting to be said because of the state of my office. I keep telling them if they’d stop junking all their stuff in my office, I’d be a lot neater but they refuse to see reason.

Anywhoo – after about 30 minutes, the firemen decided there really wasn’t anything else they could do. There was no imminent peril of fire and the power was still off to the two outlets. We need to get an electrician to look at the socket because a positive wire maybe touching a negative one????? And someone will have to fix the wall. But other than that, everything is fine. Oh and the boss said we could leave early if we wanted to because, really, who’s going to get anything done after that? I straightened up my desk (snort) and then left. I’m still fighting this cold and concentration was difficult before this whole fiasco.

But I would just like to stress one more time – THIS WAS NOT MY FAULT!